


Lights

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode Tag s3ep4 “The Swarm”, F/M, Fluff, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 14:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14474610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: "So… what do you think they really are? The stars, I mean.""I… I've never told anyone, but… I've always though they were lighthouses. Billions of lighthouses…stuck at the far end of the sky.""Wow, it must be so lively up there.""But it isn't. They can see all the other lighthouses out there, and they want to talk to them. But they can't, because they're all too far apart to hear what the others are saying. All they can do…is shine their lights for afar. …So that's what they do. They shine their lights at the other lighthouses, and at me.""Why you?""Because one day... I'm going to befriend one of them."  --To The Moon





	Lights

**Author's Note:**

> some self-indulgent fluff i wrote because i can't sleep and i am extremely fond of these characters and i watched that episode where the doctor lost his memories and cried so now i have to fix it

Kes entered sick bay and covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a giggle. The doctor was slumped in his chair, an elbow on his desk and his chin in his hand, a disgruntled expression on his face and fast asleep. The overall effect was, like so many other things about her friend, oddly endearing.

She watched the simulated rise and fall of his chest for a moment before moving forward to tap him on the shoulder. He blinked at her for a nanosecond before straightening up and adjusting his uniform with a look of embarrassment on his face.

“Kes. I didn’t expect you’d be back this evening.” He said, not looking at her.

“I wasn’t planning on returning today but I couldn’t sleep. I figured I’d come back and get a head start on tomorrow’s work.” She couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice as she watched him feign interest in the screen he’d pulled in front of him.

“Ah, well, I can give you something to help you sleep, if you wish.”

Kes inclined her head. “I appreciate the offer but I’m more interested in knowing how you were sleeping just now.”

The doctor gave a delicate little cough from behind his PADD and her smile widened. She took a step forward and looked at him around the back of the screen. He looked back in the stern way she had often wanted to ask worked on anybody. After a moment, he let out a short sigh.

“I wrote a subroutine to allow me to sleep, if you must know. The benefits of sleep to human physiology may be lost on me, but I wondered if perhaps… the psychological effects…” His gaze hardened again and he turned back to the PADD. “Are you sure I can’t get you a sedative?”

While the doctor was usually a bit standoffish about his own development and well-being, he was rarely in any hurry to dismiss Kes from his presence. She rounded the desk and perched on the edge, tilting her head down to look at him more closely. “Is there something wrong?”

“Why would you ask such a thing?” He said, typing loudly and with irritation.

Kes rephrased the question. “What psychological benefits of sleep have you been looking to gain?”

The doctor didn’t stop typing. “Oh, you know.” His tone was jovial. “Decreased anxiety, increased mood, heightened memory and learning capacity…” He glanced at her for a moment, and her heart ached at the brief look of fear on his face.  

“Oh, doctor.” She sighed, placing a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t miss the way he leaned into the touch.

“I… I don’t believe it will actually have such effects unless I find some way to work that into the program, and in any case it might be too complex for me to do on my own, I may need Lieutenant Torres’s help, but… I thought, in the mean time… it seemed like something I should know if I could enjoy.” His expression was pleading, begging her to understand but not to address what he wasn’t saying- that he was still recovering from the near destruction of his personality matrix and the loss of his memories. Something that always struck Kes about the doctor was how very determined he was not to let anybody ridicule him for being fragile, while never denying outright that it was true. She supposed she admired him for it. He was infinitely more breakable than he seemed and yet stronger for it. Neelix would probably say they had that in common, her with her trusting nature and limited lifespan. Neelix always did know what to say about such things.

Kes patted the doctor’s shoulder and removed her hand, coming to a decision. “If you want to know if you enjoy sleep, you’re doing it wrong. Sleeping sitting up in a desk chair isn’t an enjoyable experience for anybody.”

“What do you suggest I do, stretch out on a bio bed?” he scoffed. Kes shook her head.

“Let me get something set up in holodeck two and meet me down there in ten minutes.”

 

Kes had no trouble pulling up the holo novel the captain had recommended her. She could remember thinking as she played through the story that the bed in the program looked divinely comfortable, and so she simply deleted all the characters and left the old Earth cottage at the base of the lighthouse standing. She climbed the winding staircase and lit the lamp as she waited for the doctor, listening to the sound of the waves with something approaching awe. There was no ocean on her homeworld.

The sea breeze tickled her hair across her neck as she looked out into the dark, drinking in the sight and the sound and the smell of this place. The sun had set a short while ago and the horizon was still hazy with it, but stars glittered above, somehow closer than they seemed out her window on Voyager, warmer. The light turned behind her, beaming out a glow across the water. Birds cried along the shore. Gulls, she believed they were called. The smell of salt and of the cooling night was all around her. She closed her eyes, leaning her crossed arms on the railing that ran along the walkway outside the light. It was incredible to her that there could have been people lucky enough to live in a place like this.

She heard the doctor’s step approaching and felt the railing shudder gently as he joined her in leaning against it. “Isn’t it beautiful?” She murmured.

He hummed his assent. “Where are we?”

Kes opened her eyes to look at him. He was peering up at the turning light with some interest.

“I think we’re on the east coast of America, around Earth’s nineteenth century. The captain suggested I come here, although I think,” she said with a small laugh, “she was more interested in the story and I ended up more interested in the location.” 

“Oh?” The doctor looked back at her.

“Yes, this is a ghost story. There should be a big thunderstorm later in the night but if the characters aren’t here to play it out it’s just background sound.”

The doctor raised his brows and narrowed his eyes in that funny way he had. “And you think this is a good place to sleep?”

“It is.” She assured him. He scoffed. “Don’t you trust me?” she asked, nudging him to turn around and look at the remains of the sunset.

“…yes, I do.” He said after a moment.

She nodded and moved closer to him, leaning her head on his shoulder and looking back out over the water. “I love it here. I think if I didn’t live on Voyager this is where I’d want to be instead.”

“In a lighthouse in the nineteenth century?”

“By the ocean.” She laughed. “Although I do adore the lighthouse.”

“Very romantic.” He said, sounding thoughtful. “The idea of living in a beacon guiding lost ships home.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me.” Kes said, truthfully. She supposed perhaps the captain enjoyed this holo novel for more than just the ghost story.

They stood in silence for a time, listening to the waves and the gulls and the slight creak of the light turning behind them. The doctor put his arm around her shoulder and after several false starts she felt him lean his head against her own. Then, just as Kes was starting to think the air was getting too cool to stand outside any longer, there came a crack of thunder in the distance.

“The storm’s starting. We have about fifteen minutes before it gets here.” Kes said. She dropped her hands from where they had been resting on the balcony and slid one down into the doctor’s, guiding him with her as she walked around the platform and back down the staircase, into the living area of the lighthouse.

The bedroom was small and the walls curved, made of a whitewashed material that was faintly rough to the touch. The furniture filled the entire room in a cozy, homey sort of way, and the light from the lighthouse spilled in the window at regular intervals. She found an oil lamp sitting on the windowsill, just where she knew it would be, and she lit it and set it beside the bed, a huge four poster piled high with the most sumptuous feather blankets and pillows she could have imagined. She slipped her shoes off and sat down on the bed, looking across the room at the doctor, who had stopped on the threshold and was now looking from her to the bed with some apprehension.

“Doctor.” She said, trying to sooth him.

“Kes.” He responded, adamantly refusing to be soothed.

“Take off your shoes and your jacket, you’ll get too warm with so many layers.” Kes’s own clothes were somewhat looser and lighter than the turtleneck and outerwear of the Starfleet uniforms. When she made no motion to remove any of it, the doctor looked mollified and strode across the room, where he laid his uniform jacket and shoes in a hard wooden chair under the window of the room and sat down on the other side of the bed.

Kes slid under the down blanket and laid back, and he followed her lead, looking less anxious with each passing minute. Kes smiled when he blinked at the rolling thunder. “It should start to rain soon.”

The doctor nodded. “This is… very comfortable.”

“Yes, I think so, too.” Kes murmured. She rolled over and turned the oil lamp out before returning to her position facing her friend and closing her eyes. “Something about this place makes me feel sleepy and safe. I don’t know what it is, because I’ve never been to a place like this before and I probably never will. Maybe it’s something instinctual about all the water sounds.”

The doctor hummed again, then let out a little sigh as he settled against his pillows.

They lay in silence for several minutes, the sound of the waves and the wind and the rain all around them and the beam of the lighthouse making regular sweeps above them shining in the window.

“Kes?” the doctor asked, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes?”

When he spoke again it was with the air of someone about to confess a grave sin. “May I… hold you?”

In response Kes scooted closer in the bed, closing the gap between them under the blankets, and sighing a little at the warmth he was giving off. She could remember when he’d announced to her he thought it would be better for morale if he felt more human to the rest of the crew. She had remembered the slightly hurt look on his face after he’d overheard somebody leaving sick bay complaining about how cold his hands were. His hands were not cold as they pulled her to his chest and as one came to rest behind her head, to stroke her hair.

“Mmm, that’s nice.” She murmured.

“All of this is… very nice.” The doctor said, hesitatingly.

“But?” Kes prompted, sensing a problem.

“But I have to wonder what made you think this would help me sleep.”

“Is it not working?”

“Oh it is,” the doctor assured her, “I just… don’t understand why or how you knew.”

Kes snuggled closer to him. “I think people have an instinctual need touch each other, especially in a lonely or isolated environment, or one they find romantic. You said you thought the lighthouse was romantic.”

“I do, yes.” The doctor ceased petting her hair and she felt him tense up. “Kes, do you expect me to…”

“If I had wanted this to be a seduction I would have told you.” She reassured him as she had reassured him on many occasions where their interactions had drifted towards what he percieved as a failure on his part to correctly anticipate her needs.

“Oh.” He relaxed. “Good.”

She felt him nuzzle her hair and smiled sleepily. “Good night, doctor.” She murmured into his chest.

“Good night, Kes.” His breath ghosted across her forehead. “Sleep well.”


End file.
